class hand-me-downs

One of the things I’ve always envied is when you look at some gorgeous home magazine or website, and the owners say things like, “my mother gave us that armchair” or “my cousin was throwing out that artwork”.

My sisters and I tend not to give each other furniture. Either we’re still using it, or we’ve been too far away to pass furniture on, or what have you. Well, I’ve now joined the ranks of people whose family and friends give them some class hand-me-downs, thanks to J’s family.

I am amazed at the quality of their “hand-me-downs”.

Our living room now features a beautiful and truly comfortable Multiyork sofa, courtesy of J’s mother, who was going to give it away to a local charity. The neat thing about Multiyork sofas is that a lot of them come with covers that are velcro’d on and off, plus they keep the sofa’s model and measurements on file for forever, so if you have where the sofa was originally purchased and the name of the original owner, they can simply make new covers off the pattern on record and send them off to you.

The off-white is the muslin upholstery cover. The fabric on the cushions is what the current cover looks like. Just about everyone thought the muslin, while too yellow for the room, was actually pretty good, so we may go with some kind of off-white fabric for the new cover, although I’m worried about it making the room a bit chilly feeling during the winter. So we may go with dark chocolate brown velvet or something. (I want dark blue velvet, myself, but J is not crazy about that idea at all, so that’s out, I’m afraid.) White is our first choice, though.

What’s your opinion, will an off-white cover make the room too cold feeling for the winter? English winters are notoriously gray, but the windows in the room face south and actually get a fair amount of sun whenever there is any. I do like the calmness of a white duck/canvas sofa, though. And I figure I can always warm it up with a throw and cushions and such. Thoughts?

We also had another lovely hand-me-down in the form of a Victorian oak table that J’s brother and sister-in-law had in turn inherited from J’s sister. However, I noticed that the screws that somewhat wonkily were holding top to base had rusted, and were rotting out the wood of the table top…and while we were looking at that, SIL noticed what might possibly have been signs of new woodworm chewing. So when Emmaus delivered to our house, they took the table away with them.

And today, while I was out at Emmaus, I noticed that the table had in fact sold and was waiting delivery to a new home. (Hopefully sans any new woodworm.)

And last but definitely not least, a lovely lady named Delle (a knitter who I met through Ravelry) and her husband gifted us with a Poäng chair from IKEA in just the right color (dark blue). Delle said the chair had to go to make room for the new nursery.

So now the Poäng chair is in the living room with a large sheepskin rug thrown over it — they were on clearance at the rug seller’s at the market at the same price for a small one at IKEA or Argos.

As soon as we can find someone to help us clear the stuff and spiders off and move them, there’s also a couple of tables in storage that we’ve been promised. And J’s youngest sister has a beautiful octagonal table she’s promised us as well.

I haven’t forgotten that I’ve promised a post on our Emmaus bargains, either, but we keep getting more of it. Soon!

White(ish) furniture terrifies me because I just don’t trust myself to keep it clean, but it looks beautiful. No, I don’t think it’ll be too cold – I’d also just use accents (cushions, throws) to warm it up. Calm is not cold. Calm is lovely.

Well, that’s one thing about the covers — you can take them off and wash them whenever you like! So, short of ink or other permanent things that would get *any* kind of color marked up, I don’t personally find white furniture too bad. (Dogs don’t help, though. Not that we have to worry about that.)